The Best Of The Worst Political Ads

In the recent Delhi assembly elections, a BJP candidate issued an ad whih wasn’t meant to sound like the BJP was responsible for women feeling unsafe on the streets of Delhi, but it did. This isn’t the first time the BJP found itself embroiled in a debate over its ad campaign. Before that, the party’s youth wing posted an advert on their Facebook page, one commentators likened more with a slim-fast ad, perhaps slightly off key in a nation where one in three people live below the poverty line and 40 per cent of children are underweight. But, if it serves as any consolation, the right-wing Hindu party isn’t alone. Political parties world-over have, from time-to-time, stuck a foot in their mouth with their ad campaigns…

In the run-up to recent State assembly elections in New Delhi, Indian political parties courted the female vote, a bid to tap into national vexation about how the country, and the capital in particular, treats its women. But India’s main opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, may have been trying a bit too hard in this direction.
On 2,000 pamphlets issued to voters in Mehrauli, a neighborhood in southwest Delhi, the BJP asked: “Why don’t women feel safe nDelhi roads?”
Underneath, below a picture of three male BJP leaders, it said: “We are the answer.”
The candidate who issued the ad said it wasn’t meant to sound like the BJP was responsible for women feeling unsafe on the streets of Delhi. But that’s the message that comes across at first glance – at least for English readers.
A second, perhaps a third look, draws attention to text in a relatively smaller font. “Together we will win the battle,” the pamphlet reads. “Young and dynamic personality passion and dedication to serve,” it adds, pointing to Parvesh Sahib Singh, the man who contested the polls for the BJP from Mehrauli and issued the leaflet.
In the Hindi version of the pamphlet, the line in question translated to, “We are the solution.” Perhaps the message was lost in translation. The gang rape in December led to widespread protests calling for harsher laws and better policing on India’s streets. Political parties in Delhi, for the first time, made women’s issues a key plank of their political manifestos, an attempt to capitalise on a subject dominating national consciousness. In an interview with India Real Time, Mr. Singh, the BJP candidate in Mehauli, said that the party meant well. What we intended, he said, is to tell voters that “we are the solution” to help put an end to violent crimes against women. “It is not that we are responsible for that.”
A BJP spokesman said he was not aware of the leaflet and declined to comment immediately. This isn’t the first time the BJP found itself embroiled in a debate over its ad campaign. Before that, the party’s youth wing posted an advert on their Facebook page, one commentators likened more with a slim-fast ad, perhaps slightly off key in a nation where one in three people live below the poverty line and 40 per cent of children are underweight. But, if it serves as any consolation, the right-wing Hindu party isn’t alone. Political parties world-over have, from time-to-time, stuck a foot in their mouth with their ad campaigns.

Barack Obama, who triumphed for the Democrats in the 2012 presidential race, has had his own slip-ups in the campaign ad arena. In a minute-long commercial issued ahead of polls, Lena Dunham, a television actress, tells voters: “Your first time shouldn’t be just with anybody. You want to do it with a great guy.” Ms. Dunham, who stars in the 2012 television comedy, “Girls”, then lists qualities the man should have. On top: ensuring women have access to better health-care facilities and birth control measures.

In 2010, Tim Spears, a legislator from North Carolina in the U.S., issued an apology after a leaflet meant to voice his support for theU.S. military showed pictures of soldiers wearing German army uniforms from World War II. “In combat, you always want another soldier covering your back,” the flyer read. In 2012, Herman Cain, who was in the running for a Republican Party nomination for U.S. President, outraged many with a commercial issued in the race to presidential elections. The 36-second ad was aimed at deriding the Democratic Party-backed tax code, which many believed was killing small businesses. The ad, which involves a little girl and a rabbit, starts innocently with the girl’s voice over. “This is small business,” she says, referring to the rabbit. “This is a small business under the current tax code,” the girl adds. The rabbit is then catapulted in the air. Seconds later, the animal is shot by a gunman.
Animal rights groups slammed the ad as insensitive, while others criticized it for glorifying violence.
And Barack Obama, who triumphed for the Democrats in the 2012 presidential race, has had his own slip-ups in the campaign ad arena. In a minute-long commercial issued ahead of polls, Lena Dunham, a television actress, tells voters: “Your first time shouldn’t be just with anybody. You want to do it with a great guy.” Ms. Dunham, who stars in the 2012 television comedy, “Girls”, then lists qualities the man should have. On top: ensuring women have access to better health-care facilities and birth control measures.
Then, the 27 year-old describes her experience as a young voter in 2009, where she says she voted for Mr. Obama. Before going to the polling station, she said, “I was a girl.” But after casting my ballot, she added, “I was a woman.” The ad, meant to woo first-time female voters – not unlike the BJP’s ad in New Delhi — backfired.
“So, now we equate voting for Obama with sex? This is offensive and beneath the President’s office,” wrote commenter Stephen Gaskins, Jr. on YouTube, where the commercial was posted by Mr. Obama’s campaigning team.
Political analysts and commentators chimed in. The ad is “further proof about just how much the President has cheapened the Presidency,” Erick Erickson, the editor-in-chief of RedState, a conservative American political blog, wrote.
American politicians aren’t the only ones to raise eyebrows in the West with their political campaigns. Britain, too, has had campaigns that didn’t quite hit the mark.
In 2010, Britain’s Labour Party tried to snub its opponent, the Conservative Party, by portraying the party’s leader David Cameron as Gene Hunt, a detective from the hit 2008 BBC television series, Ashes to Ashes. The ad showed Mr. Cameron sitting on a red colored Audi Quattro in snakeskin shoes – reminiscent of Hunt in the TV show.
“Don’t let him take Britain back to the 1980s,” the strapline read, a reference to a decade marred by economic slowdown and high unemployment in the U.K. In the popular sitcom, Alex Drake, the protagonist, is miraculously transported back to 1980s after being shot in the head. But the Conservatives turned Labour’s campaign against them. The party ran the same ad, only this time, with a different strapline.
“Fire up the Quattro. It’s time for change,” it read. Mr. Cameron went on to become Britain’s Prime Minister leading a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
– WSJ